In his Advocamp 2016 talk, Bob presents his data-backed insights on how to incorporate advocacy into every stage of your customer’s journey to impact your demand generation strategy and win rates. You can read the highlights below, or watch Bob’s full AMP talk in the video below.

Advocamp: the biggest customer engagement and advocacy event of the year

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The highlight reel: customer-created content is the new demand imperative

0:53 – Bob begins with a quick story about building customer advocacy by talking about the time he took a Swedish CIO to the only place he wanted to go: The Mall Of America. After spending an hour surrounded by half-clad images of boys and bad-smelling cologne [at Abercrombie & Fitch], the CIO says: says “Bob, this is why we’re doing business with you…If you listen to me now for this personal request, I know you’re going to listen to me when we have business challenges down the road.”

9:17 – Bob reports that less than 1 in 5 people say that they know their customer’s journey extremely well. Yet, Bob points out that “customer advocacy lives and dies with your ability to develop some type of intimacy with your customers. I don’t know how you have any chance of establishing intimacy if you don’t take the time to understand what it’s like to be a customer.”

10:03 – Bob points out a crucial mistake many marketers make. Not only do some marketers underestimate the value of advocacy, but they also believe that advocacy matters most late in the buyer’s journey and not as much early on. In fact, advocacy is necessary at all stages of the buyer’s journey, especially at the earlier stages. “Don’t just save that ace for that last stage, bring it forward,” says Bob.

11:04 – Bob shares Sirius’s buyer journey worksheet. He suggests brainstorming with your team how to incorporate advocacy into your content at every stage. For example, an early stage prospect may want to see press release quote, whereas a prospect who is ready to close will want to see an in-depth case study.

12:56 – “Advocacy isn’t just for the buyer’s journey.” Bob says you should “use advocacy to help support the customer throughout their customer life-cycle…For example, somebody just comes on board, sales shakes the hand of the customer marketing or customer success person, welcomes them into the community? Well, content could be here, quick win stories: tips, tricks, FAQs, etc.”

14:19 – Bob leaves his audience with 5 main takeaways:

Understand your buyer’s journey and where advocacy can help

Understand your customer life-cycle and when it’s okay to make “asks”

Understand your customer life-cycle and when advocacy is most beneficial

Define a clear measurement strategy to prove advocacy’s value to your team

Make a case for the resources you need to create an even bigger impact

How to calculate the ROI of advocate marketing

Learn how to measure and track the value of advocate marketing—and prove to your entire company that it’s worth the investment. This guide features insights from marketers at companies like BMC Software, Ceridian, Iron Mountain, ReadyTalk and more.

Riviera is a digital marketer who's fascinated by the quirks of human psychology and how they apply to marketing. You can often find her defending the Oxford comma, grooving a little too hard to her music on the subway, and/or grabbing another Cheese String from the Influitive snack fridge. Follow her on Twitter: @rivieraTO
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